We forgot to write on the previous post, that what the nurse thought was two girls and a boy actually turned out to be three boys! We definitely were looking forward to having another girl in the house, for me to spoil and Katy to have someone for her team as every child who we've had has been a boy, and it looks like this trend would continue! But in the end, we truly truly just wanted all three of these boys to come out of the womb and enter the world, regardless of their gender.
A
B
C
Back to the actual week...
TTTS was a brand new term to us. We had no idea what it meant for our babies or for us. We also were very reluctant to begin googling anything as we had been advised, very wisely, to not look online at anything. Needless to say, the draw was too strong and we caved. Fortunately, the first search took us to a website called the TTTS Foundation. After sending an email to the contact person we were surprised when the actual founder, Mary Slaman-Forsythe, emailed me back within 12 hours. She gave me all kinds of information regarding TTTS as well as a link to her Facebook page which connected us with numerous other parents of twins who had/have TTTS. She also forwarded on my info to a man named Dr. Julian De Lia, a renowned researcher and pioneer in the aforementioned laser surgery. Mary is a super sweet woman and I would direct anyone who knows their twins have TTTS to her foundation. Amazingly enough, two days later, Dr. De Lia called Katy personally and spent the better part of an hour walking her through all of the things to look for, ask of our perinatologist, and answering questions. It blew us away that this doctor who has his own patients, research, and life to take care of, was willing to call us on his personal time with very little knowledge of who we were or what we were going through. Dr. De Lia was extremely gracious, kind, and loving to our family and the impression he left, as well as the knowledge, we will be forever grateful for.
The week in between these ultrasounds was quite encouraging with all of the support we had. We went into the appointment feeling equipped and ready to tackle whatever Dr. Shields saw on the screen. Sure enough, it appeared as if baby C had lost more amniotic fluid and baby B's fluid was slightly elevated. Additionally, he could not see baby C's bladder. This suggested his bladder may be empty because it was not receiving enough blood from the placenta to his kidneys to create urine and thus make his bladder visible once it had filled. Dr. Shields still felt as if our best option was for the laser therapy with a man named Dr. Chmait (pronounced Sh-might) down at USC, one of the leading fetal specialists.
So far we have more doctors than we have babies:
Dr. Steinleitner - infertility specialist
Dr. Yin - OBGYN
Dr. Shields - perinatologist
Dr. De Lia - laser therapy pioneer
Dr. Chmait - fetal specialist
The next step was for Dr. Shields to contact Dr. Chmait, send over all of our triplets information, let Dr. Chmait analyze it, and hopefully schedule an appointment for us to go down to LA. I stressed how willing I was to move around my work schedule to accomodate Dr. Chmait's schedule to get in as soon as possible. Once again, everything was completely out of our control and in God's hands, as it always was and will be.
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